Self-control: An integrative framework

Research on self-control has flourished within the last two decades, with many researchers trying to answer one of the most fundamental questions regarding human behaviour—how do we successfully regulate desires in the pursuit of long-term goals? While recent research has focused on different strategies to enhance self-control success, we still know very little about how strategies are implemented or where the need for self-control comes from in the first place. Drawing from parallel fields (e.g., emotion regulation, health) and other theories of self-regulation, we propose an integrative framework that describes self-control as a dynamic, multi-stage process that unfolds over time. In this review, we first provide an overview of this framework, which poses three stages of regulation: the identification of the need for self-control, the selection of strategies to regulate temptations, and the implementation of chosen strategies. These regulatory stages are then flexibly monitored over time. We then expand this framework by outlining a series of growth points to guide future research. By bridging across theories and disciplines, the present framework improves our understanding of how self-control unfolds in everyday life.     

Cognitive neuroscience of self-regulation failure

Self-regulatory failure is a core feature of many social and mental health problems. Self-regulation can be undermined by failures to transcend overwhelming temptations, negative moods and resource depletion, and when minor lapses in self-control snowball into self-regulatory collapse. Cognitive neuroscience research suggests that successful self-regulation is dependent on top-down control from the prefrontal cortex over subcortical regions involved in reward and emotion. We highlight recent neuroimaging research on self-regulatory failure, the findings of which support a balance model of self-regulation whereby self-regulatory failure occurs whenever the balance is tipped in favor of subcortical areas, either due to particularly strong impulses or when prefrontal function itself is impaired. Such a model is consistent with recent findings in the cognitive neuroscience of addictive behavior, emotion regulation and decision-making.     

不同情绪调节方式对记忆的影响

个体的情绪调节与其认知的关系是近年来情绪和认知领域中一个重要的前沿研究热点。本研究则通过两个阶段的实验,较系统地探讨了两种情绪调节分类下的四种情绪调节方式（原因调节——评价忽视和评价重视,反应调节——表情抑制和表情宣泄;减弱调节——评价忽视和表情抑制,增强调节——评价重视和表情宣泄）对记忆（视觉和听觉记忆）及记忆评价（即元记忆,视觉和听觉元记忆）的影响。结果表明：(1)评价忽视和评价重视对记忆没有影响;表情抑制和表情宣泄对记忆影响显著（表情抑制影响了听觉记忆,表情宣泄影响了视觉和听觉记忆）;(2)评价忽视、评价重视和表情宣泄对元记忆没有影响;而表情抑制影响听觉元记忆;(3)不同情绪调节方式对记忆的影响无性别和专业上的差异,但对元记忆虽无性别差异上的影响,却存在专业上的差异。总之,个体不同的情绪调节方式会对记忆和元记忆产生不同影响     

聋生心理健康与成就动机、行为方式的相互影响

以苏州市聋生这一特殊群体为研究对象,运用问卷调查和半结构式访谈的方法,探讨其心理健康状况及影响因素。结果发现,聋生的心理健康程度不及正常学生,表现在总分以及躯体症状、焦虑担忧、抑郁三个分量表上的得分均高于正常学生。学业压力、应对方式、内部成就动机和外部成就动机是影响聋生心理健康的重要因素,聋生所感受到的社会支持程度要高于正常学生,聋生的成就动机也高于正常学生,而面对压力,他们的行为应对方式却较多退缩性的。造成这种矛盾的原因是家庭和学校教育中对聋生自强、自立、自理能力培养不到位,助长了聋生因残疾而产生的惰性和依赖性行为,对聋生的心理健康产生了消极影响。社会应提倡更多的正常人学习手语,让聋生有更好的社会交往环境     

执行功能对个体情绪调节策略使用倾向和调节效果的影响

为了探讨执行功能对情绪调节的作用,通过两个研究分析执行功能对情绪调节策略使用倾向和情绪调节效果的影响。研究1以100名大学生为被试,采用执行功能任务和情绪调节策略问卷考察执行功能与情绪调节策略使用倾向之间的关系;研究2招募了40名大学生被试,采用执行功能任务和情绪调节任务考察执行功能对情绪调节效果的影响,依据执行功能总分对被试进行分组,分析前33%高执行功能被试和后33%低执行功能被试在情绪调节效果上是否存在差异。结果发现,执行功能越低的个体越倾向于选择使用表达抑制策略,执行功能越高的个体使用认知重评策略进行情绪调节的效果更好。     

Hemispheric asymmetry in stress processing in rat prefrontal cortex and the role of mesocortical dopamine

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is known to play an important role not only in the regulation of emotion, but in the integration of affective states with appropriate modulation of autonomic and neuroendocrine stress regulatory systems. The present review highlights findings in the rat which helps to elucidate the complex nature of prefrontal involvement in emotion and stress regulation. The medial PFC is particularly important in this regard and while dorsomedial regions appear to play a suppressive role in such regulation, the ventromedial (particularly infralimbic) region appears to activate behavioral, neuroendocrine and sympathetic autonomic systems in response to stressful situations. This may be especially true of spontaneous stress-related behavior or physiological responses to relatively acute stressors. The role of the medial PFC is somewhat more complex in conditions involving learned adjustments to stressful situations, such as the extinction of conditioned fear responses, but it is clear that the medial PFC is important in incorporating stressful experience for future adaptive behavior. It is also suggested that mesocortical dopamine plays an important adaptive role in this region by preventing excessive behavioral and physiological stress reactivity. The rat brain shows substantial hemispheric specialization in many respects, and while the right PFC is normally dominant in the activation of stress-related systems, the left may play a role in countering this activation through processes of interhemispheric inhibition. This proposed basic template for the lateralization of stress regulatory systems is suggested to be associated with efficient stress and emotional self-regulation, and also to be shaped by both early postnatal experience and gender differences.     

情绪调节自我效能感与主观幸福感：情绪调节方式的中介作用

本研究的目的在于探讨青少年情绪调节自我效能感与主观幸福感之间的关系及情绪调节方式在其中的中介作用。采用《情绪调节自我效能感量表》、《情绪调节方式量表》和《主观幸福感量表》对1128名中学生进行测查,结果表明：(1) 情绪调节自我效能感与情绪调节方式、生活满意度、积极情感、消极情感关系紧密;(2) 情绪调节自我效能感和情绪调节方式可显著预测主观幸福感;(3) 减弱调节在情绪调节自我效能感与主观幸福感间起部分中介作用。     

Which emotional regulatory strategy makes Chinese adolescents happier? A longitudinal study

Growing interest in emotion regulation is reflected in the studies of cognitive and social development. However, the extant studies mainly highlight how emotion regulation develops based on a western value system. This study utilised a longitudinal design to examine the development of emotion regulation and explored the contributions of different regulatory strategies to emotion experience regarding the early adolescent development period in a Chinese population. A total of 303 Chinese adolescents (age range = 10–14 years) were followed up in a three‐phase longitudinal study for 3 years. In each phase of the study, participants completed Adolescents Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and Daily Emotion Scale. Results of hierarchical linear regressions revealed that Chinese adolescents reported more down‐regulation. Down‐regulation is more effective than up‐regulation in enhancing desirable emotion experience and reducing undesirable emotion experience during adolescents' development. Also, the adaptive functions of emotional regulatory strategies in Chinese background were discussed.     

Maternal Emotion Regulation and Children’s Behavior Problems: The Mediating Role of Child Emotion Regulation

Children’s difficulties managing emotions are contributors to their behavior problems, and parents’ emotion regulation difficulties are also likely contributors to their children’s regulatory challenges and behavioral difficulties. This study examined the associations among mothers’ emotion regulation, children’s emotion regulation, and children’s behavior problems. Children’s emotion regulation difficulties were hypothesized to mediate the association between maternal difficulties with emotion regulation and children’s internalizing and externalizing problems. A sample of 454 mothers completed the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, the Emotion Regulation Checklist, and the Child Behavior Checklist for their children aged 3–7. Children’s emotion regulation difficulties accounted for the indirect association between mothers’ lower emotion awareness and both internalizing and externalizing problems. On the other hand, children’s emotional negativity accounted for the indirect association between mothers’ difficulties with emotion regulation and behavior problems. Future directions for research and clinical intervention focused on promoting parental and child emotion regulation are discussed.     

Supporting the self-regulatory resource: does conscious self-regulation incidentally prime nonconscious support processes?

Ego-depletion (depletion of self-regulatory strength) can impair conscious efforts at self-regulation. Research into nonconscious self-regulation has demonstrated that preconscious automaticity and implementation intentions can automatically carry out regulatory tasks during times of ego-depletion. However, preconscious automaticity can only emerge during well-practiced tasks while implementation intentions can only support tasks that have been explicitly planned. Thus, when it comes to supporting the conscious self-regulation of nonroutine and unplanned behaviour during times of ego-depletion these processes should be ineffective. However, it is argued here that because the conscious self-regulation of nonroutine and unplanned behaviour can incidentally prime the underlying mental representations those primed representations can be postconsciously re-activated to support that behaviour during times of ego-depletion. Postconscious self-regulation might, therefore, support a type of self-regulatory behaviour that has, thus far, not been associated with any form of support.     

What counts in externalizing behaviors? The contributions of emotion and behavior regulation

The aim of this study was to examine the distinct roles of emotion and behavior regulation in externalizing behavior problems of elementary school children. Parents and teachers of 104 seven-year-old children living in Istanbul were given the Emotion Regulation Checklist and the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire. The Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory was used to measure children’s externalizing behaviors. Results revealed that emotion and behavior regulation are modestly related to each other, and in general, both abilities are linked to externalizing behaviors. Low emotion and low behavior regulation significantly predict externalizing behaviors. Interaction between the two regulatory abilities predicts externalizing behaviors. Emotion and behavior regulation appear to be separate dimensions operating together in relation to children’s behavior problems.     

Differences in Emotion Regulation Difficulties Across Types of Eating Disorders During Adolescence

Emotion regulation appears to play a key role in eating disorders. However, prior attempts to associate specific emotion regulation abilities with specific types of eating disorders resulted in inconsistent findings. Moreover, far less is known about emotion regulation in eating disorders during adolescence, a critical period of emotional development. The current study addresses this gap, comparing emotion regulation characteristics between adolescents with restrictive types of eating disorders and those with binge eating or purging types of eating disorders. Ninety-eight adolescents with eating disorders (49 with restrictive and 49 with binge eating/purging eating disorders) completed a set of questionnaires including the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS). The results revealed that binge eating/purging types of eating disorders were associated with greater difficulties in a variety of emotion regulation dimensions including impulse control, goal-directed behavior and access to effective emotion regulation strategies. Awareness and clarity of emotions were also worse in the binge eating/purging types of eating disorders, but this difference did not remain when comorbid psychopathology measures were controlled for. Moreover, the emotion regulation profile of adolescents with anorexia nervosa-binging/purging type was more similar to that of adolescents with bulimia nervosa than to that of adolescents with anorexia nervosa-restrictive type. While both restrictive and binge eating/purging eating disorders have been associated with emotion regulation difficulties, the current study shows that the presence of binge eating or purging episodes is linked with greater severity of emotion regulation deficits among adolescents with eating disorders.     

Overlapping neural substrates between intentional and incidental down-regulation of negative emotions

Emotion regulation can be achieved in various ways, but few studies have evaluated the extent to which the neurocognitive substrates of these distinct operations overlap. In the study reported here, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure activity in the amygdala and prefrontal cortex of 10 participants who completed two independent tasks of emotion regulation-reappraisal, measuring intentional emotion regulation, and affect labeling, measuring incidental emotion regulation-with the objective of identifying potential overlap in the neural substrates underlying each task. Analyses focused on a priori regions of interest in the amygdala and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). For both tasks, fMRI showed decreased amygdala activation during emotion regulation compared with emotion conditions. During reappraisal, this decrease in amygdala activation was accompanied by a proportional decrease in emotional intensity ratings; during affect labeling, the decrease in amygdala activation correlated with self-reported aggression. Importantly, across participants, the magnitude of decrease in amygdala activation during reappraisal correlated with the magnitude of decrease during affect labeling, even though the tasks were administered on separate days, and values indexing amygdala activation during each task were extracted independently of one another. In addition, IFG-amygdala connectivity, assessed via psychophysiological interaction analysis, overlapped between tasks in two regions within the right IFG. The results suggest that the two tasks recruit overlapping regions of prefrontal cortex, resulting in similar reductions in amygdala activation, regardless of the strategy employed. Intentional and incidental forms of emotion regulation, despite their phenomenological differences, may therefore converge on a common neurocognitive pathway.     

The role of sustained attention,maternal sensitivity,and infant temperament in the development of early self-regulation

This study investigated infant predictors of early cognitive and emotional self-regulation from an intrinsic and caregiving environmental perspective. Sustained attention, reactive aspects of infant temperament, and maternal sensitivity were assessed at 10 months (n = 124) and early self-regulation (including executive functions, EF, and emotion regulation) was assessed at 18 months. The results indicated that sustained attention predicted early EF, which provide empirical support for the hierarchical framework of EF development, advocating early attention as a foundation for the development of cognitive self-regulation. Maternal sensitivity and surgency predicted emotion regulation, in that infants of sensitive mothers showed more regulatory behaviours and a longer latency to distress, whereas high levels of surgency predicted low emotion regulation, suggesting both the caregiving environment and temperament as important in the development of self-regulation. Interaction effects suggested high sustained attention to be a protective factor for children of insensitive mothers, in relation to emotion regulation. In addition, high levels of maternal sensitivity seemed to foster development of emotion regulation among children with low to medium levels of sustained attention and/or surgency. In all, our findings point to the importance of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors in infant development of self-regulation.     

Emotion Regulation of Preschool Children in Foster Care: The Influence of Maternal Depression and Parenting

Emotion regulation is a core developmental process that is related to children’s academic success and mental health. A small body of research has documented that maltreated children show deficits in this developmental arena. The current study was designed to add to the limited literature on emotion regulation in maltreated children in foster care. Emotion regulation tasks were administered to preschool foster children, videotaped, and later coded. Parenting was assessed via coded observations of mother-child interactions. Mothers reported on their experience of depressive symptomatology. We examined the relation of foster parenting and foster mother depression, as well as child characteristics and child welfare experiences, to emotion regulation, specifically in the joy and anger domains. Findings revealed that maternal depression and parental structuring significantly contributed to children’s anger regulation, but not to their regulation of joy. These findings are considered in the context of future research with respect to young maltreated children in foster care.     

The effect of self- and interpersonal emotion regulation on athletes’ anxiety and goal achievement in competition

ObjectivesThere exists a wealth of evidence that athletes must regulate their emotions for optimal performance and wellbeing. In addition to athletes’ attempts to regulate their own emotions, they may also attempt to regulate each other’s emotions (interpersonal emotion regulation). Though self- and interpersonal emotion regulation likely co-occur, previous research has not explored how these strategies concurrently impact athletes’ emotions and performance outcomes. In the current study, we examined whether athletes’ emotional self-regulation and the receipt of interpersonal emotion regulation from their teammates were related to their anxiety and goal achievement during competition.DesignQuantitative, cross-sectional retrospective survey design.MethodData were gathered following sport competitions from 509 participants from 50 interdependent sport teams from Canada and the UK (M_age = 19.0, SD = 3.1).ResultsAnalysis of the data using structural equation modeling revealed that after accounting for pre-competition anxiety, received interpersonal emotion regulation was not associated with anxiety during competition, though affect-worsening self-regulation was positively associated with anxiety during competition. Received interpersonal emotion regulation was also not associated with goal achievement, yet affect-improving and affect-worsening self-regulation were associated with goal achievement. Nevertheless, when the influence of emotional self-regulation on anxiety and goal achievement was set to zero, affect-improving and affect-worsening interpersonal emotion regulation were associated with anxiety during competition and affect-improving interpersonal emotion regulation was associated with goal achievement.ConclusionsThese data can be interpreted as evidence that emotion regulation actions between teammates are important for anxiety and performance outcomes, albeit this effect is attenuated in the presence of athletes’ own emotional self-regulation. These results extend the extant research on self- and interpersonal emotion regulation in sport, and in line with these observations, we highlight a number of future research opportunities for researchers examining emotion regulation in performance contexts.     

Violence restrained: Effects of self-regulation and its depletion on aggression

Aggressive impulses arise from many factors, but they are usually held in check by social norms for self-control. Thus, the proximal cause of aggression is often failure of self-restraint. In five studies, depleted capacity for self-regulation (caused by prior, even irrelevant acts of self-regulation) increased aggressive responding, especially after an insulting provocation. When participants were insulted and their self-regulatory strength was depleted (i.e., after completing previous tasks that required self-regulation), participants were more likely to aggress. When the urge to aggress was relatively weaker (i.e., when participants were not insulted), self-regulatory depletion did not increase aggressive behavior. This effect was moderated by trait self-control: Participants low in trait self-control were particularly likely to express intentions of behaving aggressively in response to provocation, whereas participants high in trait self-control did not express intentions of responding aggressively. Laboratory, autobiographical memory, and hypothetical responses confirmed the pattern.     

Attention to Emotion and Non-Western Faces: Revisiting the Facial Feedback Hypothesis

In a modified replication of Strack, Martin, and Stepper's demonstration of the Facial Feedback Hypothesis (1988), we investigated the effect of attention to emotion on the facial feedback process in a non-western cultural setting. Participants, recruited from two universities in Ghana, West Africa, gave self-reports of their perceived levels of attention to emotion, and then completed cartoon-rating tasks while randomly assigned to smiling, frowning, or neutral conditions. While participants with low Attention to Emotion scores displayed the usual facial feedback effect (rating cartoons as funnier when in the smiling compared to the frowning condition), the effect was not present in individuals with high Attention to Emotion. The findings indicate that (1) the facial feedback process can occur in contexts beyond those in which the phenomenon has previously been studied, and (2) aspects of emotion regulation, such as Attention to Emotion can interfere with the facial feedback process.     

情绪对工作记忆影响的研究综述

情绪在我们的生活中扮演着十分重要的角色,各种认知活动都或多或少的受其影响。有关情绪与工作记忆相互作用的研究中,很多的证据表明,情绪对认知表现的影响可能是通过工作记忆完成的。本文对情绪分类,情绪影响工作记忆的相关理论及以往的相关研究进行了介绍,同时提出存在的问题并进行展望。     

自我损耗对工作记忆的影响及其克服

实验1考察了自我损耗对工作记忆的影响。40名6年级小学生被随机分配到实验组和控制组,分别完成损耗任务和非损耗任务。结果发现,与控制组相比,实验组被试的工作记忆容量明显降低。实验2考察积极情绪能否克服自我损耗对工作记忆的负面影响。40名6年级小学生参加了实验。在完成损耗任务后,采用自传式回忆的方法诱发实验组的积极情绪。结果发现,诱发被试的积极情绪体验,能够克服自我损耗对于工作记忆的消极影响。